Manhunt launched after firing rumours in Jamshedpur

Jamshedpur, September 9: What began as a terrifying report of gunfire at a coaching centre in Jamshedpur’s Telco Colony quickly spiralled into a city-wide panic, setting off a manhunt by the local police.

The Jamshedpur Police, alerted by locals to an alleged attack on a teacher, swiftly sealed off border areas of Telco and Birsanagar police stations, to nab the criminals behind the shooting.

As tension gripped the area, Akash Sinha, the injured teacher was rushed to Tata Main Hospital for medical treatment. Rumours of the shooting spread like wildfire across social media and WhatsApp, intensifying the atmosphere of fear in the locality.

However, after hours of investigation, the truth behind the alleged firing emerged and it was far from what anyone expected.

Birsanagar police station officer-in-Charge Nimdhari Rajak revealed the surprising turn of events that transformed the city’s pulse from fear to disbelief.

“No firing incident had taken place,” Rajak said.

“The panic was the result of a child’s innocent play gone awry. A group of children, aged between eight and 12, had been hunting birds near the coaching center, as they often did. In an unfortunate twist, a pebble shot by one of the children struck the window of the coaching center where Sinha was teaching,” Birsanagr OC said.

The glass shattered, sending shards flying and injuring the unsuspecting teacher. The loud crack of the breaking glass, combined with the sight of the injury, quickly led to false assumptions that a shooting had occurred.

In his statement to the police, Sinha recounted the moment of confusion: “I was in the middle of a class at HBC Coaching Centre near Bhubaneswari Mandir when it happened. A pebble hit the window. There was no gunshot,” he explained to police.

What began as a terrifying manhunt for a supposed gunman ended with a much simpler truth – a child’s slingshot misfire had set the entire city on edge.